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Euro Pool System, a manufacturer of loading boxes whose products are mainly used in fruits, vegetables and other agricultural products, is now adopting passive UHF RFID tags and readers to improve its logistics and inventory management processes.
Euro Pool is headquartered in Belgium and has factories in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic. The company began to pay attention to RFID as early as 2003. Euro Pool engineering and development manager Henry Lok said that he hopes to use RFID technology to simplify logistics processes and improve processing efficiency.
Unlike the linear and two-dimensional barcodes used by the company before, RFID technology does not require direct-view scanning, which is also an important reason for attracting Euro Pool to adopt RFID. Euro Pool has more than 8,800 containers, transports hundreds of orders in European countries every day, and carries at least 414 million individual cargoes every year.
Euro Pool has signed a partnership with HP’s business and IT departments. HP Services recently opened an RFID application solution center in Milan, Italy in cooperation with Intel and Microsoft. It was in this center that HP consultants tested numerous tags, readers and middleware, and developed an RFID application system for the Euro Pool distribution warehouse.
Euro Pool is currently running an RFID pilot project in a newly built warehouse in Zellik, Belgium. Apply an EPC Class 1 Gen 2 RFID tag to the bottom of the foldable plastic crate. The implementation of the Zellik pilot project began in January 2006. A pallet in the warehouse can load 304 crates. The RFID warehouse door reads the crates (empty or full) on the pallet and records their arrival or departure time, including any time the warehouse stores the crates. The total number of boxes.
Euro Pool System crates
Lok claims that RFID technology can track crates faster and more efficiently than barcodes. “RFID has increased our processing speed,” he explained. “Using a two-dimensional bar code, you have to stay in front of the warehouse door for one second to read the crates on the pallet. With RFID tags, the pallet can pass through the warehouse door at a speed of 6 kilometers per hour, which is much faster. “
In cooperation with HP and German injection molding company Bekuplast, Euro Pool designed labelable and foldable crates. The crate is 60 cm long, 40 cm wide, and has a height range of 10-24 cm. The label is embedded in the lower part of the crate and can withstand high-pressure washing in soapy water at high temperatures (70 degrees Celsius).
HP and Euro Pool began designing and testing RFID systems in early 2006. In the first year of test operation, the reading success rate was only 60%. “Many of the readers we tested failed to operate normally, so we had to redesign and add software filtering functions. Sometimes the tags did not work properly, so We also modified the labeling technology,” Lok recalled. Lok said that the reading rate has now reached 100%. “We tested the reader and modified the antenna. Basically, we made adjustments and modifications as far as you can think.”
Lok added, “We believe that the use of RFID tags can better track the returned crates. A pallet can hold 304 crates, and sometimes you only receive 300 crates, but it’s hard to notice. Up to 4. The use of RFID can accurately calculate the number of crates, so that the company can reduce the number of crates stored in the warehouse while meeting customer needs.”
Euro Pool is currently testing RFID technology in the Zellik warehouse. The company hopes that retail customers who rent crates can participate in the test. The company plans to launch the next round of RFID testing in the first quarter of 2008. In the new round of testing, retailers can use readers to read crates and track their circulation in stores.
Euro Pool hopes that customers can benefit from the RFID data collected by the system. “Retail customers can clearly know where the crates are located through RFID,” Lok said: “They can better understand which crates are still filled with items and when they are empty; how long the crates are in the store How long is it, how fresh is the food.”
HP has built a series of RFID laboratories around the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Japan, and plans to open another one in Australia.
In addition, HP established RFID Noisy Lab in Omaha, Nebraska and Beijing to promote the development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. HP will build it into one of the most comprehensive RFID laboratories in the industry, and simulate a real manufacturing and distribution center so that HP and its customers and partners can use it to conduct trials and evaluations of RFID technology and solutions.
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